Personalised Trachea Stent Designer: a Knowledge Feature

Modelling of anatomical parts is usually tackled through triangulated models with specialised Bio-CAD applications. If features beyond anatomy are required, geometry is usually translated into NURBS geometry for further modification in parametric feature based design CAD systems. But, they remain quite unmanageable yet. The authors present, validate and implement into a knowledge feature a methodology that generates an anatomically personalised trachea stent based a point cloud data extracted from a Computerised Axial Tomography with an open-source medical data visualisation application

Annotated checklist of marine fishes from the Sanctuary of Bahía Chamela, Mexico with occurrence and biogeographic data.

An annotated checklist of marine fishes of the Sanctuary of Islands and Islets of Bahía Chamela in the central Mexican Pacific is presented. Records of fish species were obtained by different methods including visual census, sampling with anesthetics, fisherman-nets, and trawling with a biological dredge. Additional records were obtained from natural history collections and publications. The list comprises 196 species in 64 families and 141 genera. The Carangidae is the most speciose family with 11 species, followed by the Labridae with 10 and the Pomacentridae with nine. Fourteen species are endemic in Mexican Pacific waters, but none is restricted to Bahía Chamela. The most dominant species recorded during underwater surveys were Epinephelus labriformis, Stegastes flavilatus, and Halichoeres dispilus. Most species are of tropical affinities distributed throughout the tropical eastern Pacific (123), eastern Pacific (23), and Mexican Pacific (14). Other species are known from the eastern and Indo-Pacific regions (18), eastern Pacific and western Atlantic oceans (2), and some are circumtropical (9). A new record of the Gulf Brotula Ogilbia ventralis is provided for the Bahía Chamela and its geographical distribution is extended to Mexican central Pacific

Discovering frequent user-environment interactions in intelligent environments

Intelligent Environments are expected to act proactively, anticipating the user's needs and preferences. To do that, the environment must somehow obtain knowledge of those need and preferences, but unlike current computing systems, in Intelligent Environments the user ideally should be released from the burden of providing information or programming any device as much as possible. Therefore, automated learning of a user's most common behaviors becomes an important step towards allowing an environment to provide highly personalized services. In this paper we present a system that takes information collected by sensors as a starting point, and then discovers frequent relationships between actions carried out by the user. The algorithm developed to discover such patterns is supported by a language to represent those patterns and a system of interaction which provides the user the option to fine tune their preferences in a natural way, just by speaking to the system

Nutrient uptake in a stream affected by hydropower plants: comparison between stream channels and diversion canals

12 páginas, 3 figuras, 4 tablas.Small hydropower plants divert part of the water from wide and physically complex stream channels with active hyporheic areas to narrow and hydraulically simple concrete canals, and thus, might affect nutrient dynamics. We compared nutrient uptake in diversion canals and in stream channels in the Leitzaran Stream (Basque Country, northern Spain). We predicted that simple morphology in diversion canals will result in lower nutrient uptake in canals than in stream channels. Periphytic chlorophyll and biomass did not differ significantly between reach types. Water was significantly deeper and faster in canals than in stream channels, but the transient storage zone did not differ significantly between reach types. There were no significant differences between uptake length for neither phosphate nor ammonium between reach types. Uptake length in both stream channels and diversion canals decreased with discharge, in a pattern similar to that previously described for pristine rivers across the world. Uptake velocity and uptake rate for phosphate did not differ signifi- cantly between reach types, but in the case of ammonium both retention metrics were significantly larger in the diversion canals. Results suggest that although hydropower schemes have minor effects on nutrient retention, these depend on the proportion of flow diverted.This research has been funded by the Spanish Department of Science and Technology, the University of the Basque Country, and the European Regional Development Fund, through projects 9/UPV00118.310-14476/ 2002 and BOS2003-04466.Peer reviewe

La Universidad paralela como acción colectiva estudiantil durante el cierre de la Universidad de Valladolid : España (1975)

El presente trabajo final de Máster narra los hechos relacionados con el cierre de la Universidad de Valladolid en el año 1975 y la organización de la Universidad Paralela por parte de los estudiantes de dicha Universidad durante el período que duró el cierre. Este hecho nos permite analizar el fenómeno histórico de la Universidad paralela a la luz de los conceptos básicos de la teoría de la acción colectiva. Para ello, se realizó una revisión bibliográfica y una recopilación documental exhaustiva ciyos resultados son presentados en función de la interacción entre los actores involucrados en el problema estudiado. Se llega a la conclusión de que la Universidad Paralela es un hecho histórico con características de acción social estudiantil enmarcado en un proceso de cambio de la cultura política de la épocaMáster en Ciencias Sociales para la Investigación en Educació

To what extent do initiatives to formalize the commercial production of Astrocaryum chambira for handicrafts empower Indigenous women? A comparative analysis in communities with more and less external intervention

The management and use of the palm Astrocaryum chambira (commonly known in Peru as “chambira”) for handicrafts is a traditional activity for Indigenous women in the Amazon region. Some governmental and non-governmental initiatives have tried to formalize the production of chambira for handicrafts for commercial purposes, to promote women's empowerment and sustainable management. However, how successful these initiatives are in their efforts to empower women remains unclear. This paper aims to analyze to what extent formalizing the commercial production of chambira handicrafts empower Indigenous women in the Peruvian Amazon – specifically, in the Ampiyacu-Yahuasyacu basin, where external actors have been promoting the formal commercialization of chambira handicrafts through the last decades. Specifically, I examine (i) to what extent women can be incorporated into formal organizational systems, and why; (ii) how informal practices for the tenure and management of chambira and the production and commercialization of handicrafts interact with formal practices; and (iii) how does formalization influence women's economic, cultural, decision-making, and collective empowerment. To do so, I comparatively analyze four communities of the basin: two that have had more intervention from external actors towards formalization, and two that have had less intervention. Results show that formalization can empower Indigenous women in some ways, but empowerment continues to be limited and inequitable. First, not all women in all the communities can easily join formal systems due to a set of interrelated barriers, both external (e.g., unequal and limited institutional support, economic factors, and geographical location) and internal (e.g., limited family support, time availability, and self-confidence). Additionally, most (informal) traditional practices for the management of chambira and production of handicrafts – which go in line with the local realities, culture, and livelihoods – persist and play a key role complementing introduced formal practices. Finally, formalizing the commercial production of chambira handicrafts may empower Indigenous women – especially in terms of economic, decision-making, and inner power – but not necessarily, as the effects of formalization on culture and collective power are complex and contradictory. To empower women in a more effective, equal, and culturally sensitive manner, formalization projects need to holistically address both external and internal barriers to formalization, acknowledge the importance of traditional practices for forests and peoples, approach empowerment holistically rather than looking at economic empowerment alone, and critically recognize the complexities and paradoxes behind the impacts of formalization impact on Indigenous women’s empowerment

Theoretical Analysis of SPH in Simulating Free-surface Viscous flows

A theoretical analysis on the performance, close to a free surface, of the most used SPH formulations for Newtonian viscous terms is carried out in this paper. After an introduction of the SPH formalism, the SPH expressions for the viscous term in the momentum equation are analyzed in their continuous form. Using a Taylor expansion, a reformulation of those expressions is undertaken which allows to characterize the behavior of the viscous term close to the free surface. Under specific flow conditions, we show that the viscous term close to the free surface is singular when the spatial resolution is increased. This problem is in essence related to the incompleteness of the kernel function close to the free surface and appears for all the formulations considered. In order to assess the impact of such singular behavior, an analysis of the global energy dissipation is carried out, which shows that such a free-surface singularity vanishes when the integral quantities are considered. Not with standing that, not all the SPH viscous formulas allow the correct evaluation of the energy dissipation rate and, consequently, they may lead to an inaccurate modelling of viscous free-surface flows